False Memory

trivialities, absorbed with piffle, living their lives without ever realizing that Derek, people like Derek, have made this society and rule them by the power of ideas.”
    Here, in this ugly confrontation with Claudette, which for Dusty and surely for Skeet, as well, was rapidly growing into a showdown of mythic proportions, Martie was their paladin, lance raised and eye to eye with the dragon. Skeet had moved directly behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders, and Dusty was half tempted to move behind Skeet for additional protection.
    “Daring to be your own best friend,” Martie said, “and learning to love yourself—these are ideas that shape?”
    “There’s no comparison between my book and Ahriman’s,” Lampton objected, but after his wife’s vigorous defense, he sounded as though he were pouting.
    Moving half in front of Lampton, as if to physically defend her beleaguered man, but also to press her butt against him, Claudette insisted: “Derek writes vivid, solid, psychologically profound work. Rigorously composed ideas. Ahriman spews out pop-psych vomit.”
    Dusty had never before seen his mother cast off her icy veil and reveal her sexual nature, and he hoped that he would never see anything like this again. What aroused her was not ideas themselves, but the idea that ideas were power. Power was her true aphrodisiac; not the naked power of generals and politicians and prize-fighters, or even the raw power of serial killers, but the power of those who shaped the minds of generals, politicians, ministers, teachers, lawyers, filmmakers. The power of manipulation. In her flared nostrils and glittering eyes, he saw now an eroticism as cold as that of the trapdoor spider and the whip-tailed skink.
    “You still don’t get it,” Martie seethed. “In defense of Dare to Be Your Own Best Friend, you burned down our house. It might as well have been you, you directly. In defense of Dare to Be Your Own Best Friend, you shot Skeet and Fig. You think what they say happened last night is a dissociative fantasy, but it’s real, Claudette. Those bruises are real, the bullets were real. Your stupid, stupid, stupid idea of what constitutes debate, your idea that harassment is the same as reasoned discussion—that’s what influenced the finger that pulled the trigger. How’s that for shaping society, huh? Maybe you’re ready to die for Derek’s vivid, solid, rigorously composed, psychologically profound narcissistic bullshit, but I’m not!”
    From his post at the window, Fig said, “Lexus.”
    Claudette hadn’t breathed fire yet, though she was full of it. “How easy it evidently is to make ignorant, specious arguments when you’ve never had a college course in logic. If Ahriman burns down houses and shoots people, then he’s a maniac, a psychopath, and Derek is right to go after him any way he can. Indeed, if what you say is true, it’s courageous to go after him.”
    Daring to be his own best friend, Lampton said, “I always sensed a sociopath worldview in his writing. I always suspected there was risk in opposing him, but one takes risks if one cares.”
    “Oh, yes,” Martie said, “let’s call the Pentagon at once and have them get a Medal of Honor ready for you. For valor on the field of academic battle, bravery at the computer keyboard with courageous use of false names and invalid E-mail addresses.”
    “You are not welcome in my house,” said Claudette.
    “Lexus in the driveway,” Fig said.
    “So what if there’s a hundred fucking Lexuses in the driveway?” Claudette demanded, never taking her eyes off Martie. “Every idiot in this pretentious neighborhood has a Lexus or a Mercedes.”
    “Parking,” said Fig.
    Martie and Dusty joined Fig at the window.
    The driver’s door of the Lexus opened, and a tall, handsome, dark-haired man got out of the car. Eric Jagger.
    “Oh, God,” Martie said.
    Through Susan, Ahriman had gotten at Martie. With or without the benefit of a college course in logic, Dusty was able to add this particular two-plus-two.
    Eric reached back into the car to get something that he had left on the seat.
    Through Susan, Ahriman had also gotten at Eric, programming him and instructing him to separate from his wife, thereby leaving Susan alone and more vulnerable, more accessible any time the psychiatrist was in the mood to have her. And now there was something else Ahriman wanted from Eric, something a little more strenuous than moving out of his wife’s house.
    “Hacksaw,” Fig said.
    “Autopsy saw,” Dusty